


Amid the Innumerable Stars

by skye_of_stars



Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Gen, Post-choice, but in a positive way, early second age, elrond is a cute bean, lots of mortality & immortality talk, soon after the sinking of Beleriand
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-18
Updated: 2018-03-31
Packaged: 2019-04-03 23:24:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 12,860
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14007117
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skye_of_stars/pseuds/skye_of_stars
Summary: Mere days after choosing the First Kindred, Elrond decides to keep a diary ... within his own memories, as they are perfect and immutable now.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [vardasvapors (cynewulf)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cynewulf/gifts).



Oh, how lucky, how lucky am I!To have been offered this choice, I am so lucky—and look, look, here, my footsteps crunch on the fallen leaves, fall has come and with it a wind in the air.It is my third day now—only my third!—fully tethered to this world, living immortally, never leaving it, and oh!How would I ever wish to leave it?How, how ever?

This, then, my thoughts, is like a diary—“I should keep one,” my brother said last night as we drank wine and laughed together and remembered the old times and planned our futures, and tried to get used to the subtle differences between us, the way we were no longer identical, not quite—but of course, I do not need to write it.Of course, of course!I look up to the sun, and it is shining through all the leaves, I feel the air on my skin and it is cool, I take a breath and I close my eyes and I remember each moment, each one, perfectly.Perfectly!Oh!

I can outstretch my hand, and in it hold a memory—more easily one of my new ones, of these past three days, but if I try a little, my earlier ones too, although they are softer and more hesitant to come, less bright and clear around all their edges—I can hold it and more feel than see it all through me, but see it to.I can do this at any time, I can wrap them around me, memory after memory after memory, and in so doing dream at night, dream at day, dream any time I so wish to rest.

I smile; oh, I smile.I cannot see myself from outside, of course, but I imagine the apparent joy of my smile, and even imagining _that_ makes me smile more—

“Having fun, brother?”

“Yes,” I say, and find myself bowing gracefully—

Elros laughs, a laugh that sounds almost exactly like my laugh, although if I listen hard enough I can almost imagine there’s more distance in it—a possibility to escape this world, to be somewhere else, a waywardness, but oh, he gets that possibility too, now.

“What?” I ask, playfully, even though I know exactly what he is laughing at.

“You are a _mess_ of over-exaggeration and needless presence in each of your actions,” Elros says.

“Oh, and as if you have no similar traits—“

“I, _brother_ , sometimes stop talking once I have started.”

I laugh, and in that laugh I feel gentleness, and in that laugh too I feel the very falling leaf that—oh, oh, I see what is coming—that falls right and just perfectly into Elros’ hair.I can’t help it.I laugh even more.

“Now it is I who must ask what has made you mirthful so,” Elros says.

_Nothing_ , I try to say, but cannot quite—after all, would that not be a lie?I have never liked lying, but it does seem that it comes even harder to me now, chosen, my ears seemingly having become longer overnight after I did, which Elros laughed at too, even if I also find that his now-round ones look ridiculous—

“And they say it is I who daydream without end!” Elros says.

I laugh again, and walk a little closer to him, sure as possible to see and therefore always remember the confusion in his eyes as a leaf rests in his hair as if it wants to set up a bed there.I swipe it out of his hair with one hand, and smile.“This, brother.”

“Ah, I think I see,” Elros says, and as he says this I cannot in the slightest help but notice the way the light is golden against the bark of the tree he is nearest too, and oh, oh, I will be able to watch this tree’s children grow tall and rise into golden light too—

“You are still daydreaming,” Elros reminds me.

“A little,” I admit, recognizing that my memories of the very moments I am experiencing are collecting around me like cloth: a dream, a dream.“But it pleases me so, to love this moment, and to hold it forever.”

“You elf,” Elros says with a smirk of a smile.

“Indeed,” I say, and incline my head in a moment that tosses some of my hair over my face.

The hair moves from my face, and there are hands near my head; Elros, messing with my appearance just as I just messed with his.

I stand up fully again and smile, and somehow in this motion I seem taller than him, although I know I cannot be.A sadness draws to the back of my eyes, and I do not deny it, I refuse to.I hold it there just as I hold the golden light and Elros’ smile, and I let all these things filter together into the meaning and feeling of my own smile.

“You’re missing me, aren’t you?” Elros asks.

It feels like a chill wind through me, those words, but not an altogether unwanted one: a chill wind on a bright and sunny winter’s day, the kind of day that comes with swift ending and long night.

“Yes,” I admit, my voice a little quieter than I’d meant it, although no less gentle.

“I have many years yet, you know,” he says.

“I do know,” I say.

_But not enough, not enough, or maybe enough, but even so nowhere near as many as me._ I do not say this.But Elros knows it; I see it in his eyes.We have exchanged these glances often of late, and I daresay we exchanged them even before we made our choices. 

I suspect we both knew, in heart, long before we ever said it aloud, even to ourselves.

I move my hands towards his, and he lets me clasp his hands in mine, as we sometimes did when we were children: but we both know what this gesture means now.Mine around his, as if _I_ am the protector, as if I am the one of more power—because I am, now I am, we are different, a sundered kindred, and yet not sundered at all in blood or in shared past.

“May that your life and your kingdom to come fares you well,” I say to him.

“A foretelling?” Elros asks with that head-tilt I know I also often make, amusement in his voice.

“Perhaps,” I say, echoing his same tone.

“Then perhaps I should give one to you?For I still can, you know.We are Peredhil, us both, regardless of our differing paths.”

_One through the world, and the other around it_.

“Only if you wish it,” I say.

“I do,” he says, and extracts his hands from mine only to recreate the same gesture, this time with his hands around mine.He closes his eyes a little bit, and lets a smile form—a happy prediction, then.It is good that despite all we have already been through, there is likely to be such happiness yet in my future.But then, that should not and does not surprise me: my belief in that very thing is so much of what led me to my choice.

“You will see and you will love,” he says half in a whisper.“And may that your hold to the love, in all its tightness, will exceed the sorrows that will also come.”

“It will, brother,” I whisper back.“After all I promised myself so.”

“You did, now?” He says in a smile, not quite opening his eyes yet but again tilting his head.

I laugh; I know as well as he does that I have already told him at least ten times in the mere three days since I have made my choice, of the first thing I thought to myself upon the making.No, no, not _at least ten_ —I am Elf now, entirely, and I can know without strain the exact number, and it is fourteen.Fourteen!Oh, it is no wonder my brother makes such fun of me.

Despite these thoughts I still find myself saying, “Yes, I promised, I promised, I chose to live forever, to accept the bitter and the sweet of that choice; the sweet, the sweet!And I said to myself—“

Elros’ eyes are open now, all the better to roll them, it seems; he laughs, but he lets me continue.

“—I said to myself, _I will now remember forever and always, throughout the world, and so I will remember this, I will: that I promise myself now to hold onto the joy, always and always, infinite, for I will have it in infinite measure, and to hold it is the greatest gift I can give myself, the fulfillment of the rightness of my choice_.”

“Brother, I would marvel that you word it exactly the same way each time, did I not know,” Elros says.

“Indeed,” I say.And the next set of words wells in me like a warm and shallow lake; I know exactly what I wish to say, and yet part of me fears the sorrow of it—but _no_!Did I not also promise myself to not shy away from sorrow?To take it all in, and yet always most closely remember the joy?

So I breathe in and remember the very light that surrounds me, and I say, “And how is your choice treating you, brother?”

“Strange, almost,” he says with a smile, the distance in that smile striking me almost like a physical force, but yet I do not reel from it, I do not, I hold my ground.“And yet gentle.Freeing.”

I try to smile, but I cannot quite, so instead I close my eyes and hope to hold gentleness of my own kind within my lashes. 

“Not like you at all, hm?” Elros says, open and direct: more than he normally is, such that I almost suspect he is doing it _for_ me, in an attempt to comfort me.“You would not wish the gentle, the option to escape, to hide from the world in either sleep or in—“

_Don’t say it_ , I whisper to myself in my mind, and mercifully, he doesn’t.

“No, no I would not,” I say. 

I hardly know what is happening before Elros takes me in to a hug, he with arms that are the same as mine, he who is identical to me except not, not at all, not anymore.

And I cannot stop it, my own promise runs too deep in me, my refusal to deny the moments that I will always have: and so I let myself cry.He is warm, he is warm and I knew him since before even my first breath, and we are estranged, we are now estranged—but I will always remember him, always, no matter what happens.

“Perhaps you will not be quite as free as you expected,” I find myself whispering.“For after all it will be true that through me, the memory of you will always walk the world.”

“That is as it should be,” Elros says, and perhaps I hold onto him a little tighter, and perhaps I smile.As it should be, as it should be, both of us—

“I will not forget,” I say, because Elros is right; I do not stay in long silence easily at all.

“Indeed you won’t,” he says back to me. 

And slowly he releases me from the hug, and in his eyes I can see that he’d cried somewhat as well.

“Oh, brother,” I say, and he smiles.

There is distance in him now too, I can see it in all his face, and it is as if some feeling passes through him, and then he says, “Well, then!Such heavy conversation makes one hungry, does it not?Come, brother, I believe there’s spiced meat to prepare.”

“Ah, Elros,” I say.“You indeed have a skill in changing the subject.”

He smiles, starting to turn and walk toward the prospect of dinner.“Indeed, brother.After all, is that not one of the strengths of the Second Kindred?”

I smile, and even through the heaviness in my heart I find also the brightness to have a bounce in my step as I follow him.And oh, I will follow him, so long as I can, I will remember him, I will help in his works, so long as I can, so long as I can.

After all, after—after what I do not want to think of, after what I yet need to think of, _after his death, after his death_ , I will not suppress the thought—I will have more time.I will have more time.


	2. Chapter 2

The stars, the stars, the stars!I have always loved them, and yet to see them now is somehow a greater joy; which reminds me to ask Elros if he feels the same of the sun, and of course to remind myself now is to remember, to remember completely.

How strange and yet how right it feels to remember each and every thought!Eternal, eternal, not even death can forever take me, for it is told that those who are killed yet become reembodied after time in Mandos’ halls—not even death, not even death.

I trace each and every star with my mind, and they sparkle, they all sparkle, it is a joy to see even though I saw these very same stars yesterday, in the very same place.But they shine, they shine, they seem to be brighter than even sunlight for their nature of standing out against the dark, white and yet not-white, occasionally blue, each of the many words for white my native tongue holds and so much more as well.

Oh, to know that I will never lose them!For a cloudy spell, sure, but not entirely, not until world’s breaking.Oh, there will be nights and nights and nights, and it will not end— 

—and I sigh, for though I love each and every once of these thoughts and hold them like precious stars in their own right, they would be far truer and brighter if I could _seek_ them.But Elros must be sleeping, he must be, it is so late now and even I should be dreaming and yet am not, for the stars draw me to the present moment too strongly.

And yet, and yet, would that I could speak these things, would that I could! 

The very words I think echo in me, their memory eternal: and they are mine, oh how they are mine!My very desire for someone to spend the long and shining night with, to exchange stories with without end, stories and songs and tales by a fire—oh, how _me_ that is!And I will always remember.

It makes me smile, even though I’ve come to this thought by way of a desire that might, had my thoughts gone down different paths, brought me to sorrow—but then, I’ve chosen the joy over the sorrow always, have I not?That is my way, that will be my way through all this world, holding tight to each moment I encounter, loving, loving, just as Elros predicted and wished for me.

My brother … well!I do not want to disturb him, but there is _some_ chance he is sitting outside on his own anyway, perhaps gripped by an inability to sleep; of course I hope for his sake that he is resting as he should, but if he isn’t…

I stand up and shake my head at myself.My thoughts echo to me in my brother’s voice, which is of course also my own: _oh, Elrond, you insufferable_ —I smile to think it, more than I was already smiling, enough for my cheeks to hurt.

What a convenient thing that my Kindred cannot develop wrinkles!

I laugh at myself at this thought, and remember the very stars that shine above me, that I was looking at mere moments before.I laugh and my laugh becomes a song, something old and remembers from childhood, and it provides me company as I walk forward towards the sound of the sea.

I close my eyes in the cadence of the song, and it feels just like bright starlight, it feels just like the air on my skin.I close my eyes and walk forward by the place we so often set our fires, past the grove of trees—yes, yes, I do not need to open my eyes to pass this, for I have walked here before, and I have memorized the places these trees grow.Or, no, no, I have not _memorized_ them, for that implies effort, but ah!I will never need effort for such a thing again!

I only open my eyes as I come into sight of the sea, and though it is beautiful under the stars and dark of the night, I near instantly find myself close to tears.

_Beleriand.Beleriand, once.And now, under that very sea_.

And so I let my approach grow softer, not wanting to make sound against the sand as I walk, for it seems inappropriate to the mourning deep inside me.I smile something sudden as I realize that this, too, comes easier than expected; I can soften my footsteps with a thought.But oh, though I smile at it, I cannot make a sound of joy, for the very home where I once dwelled is under the waves, and never will I see it again, never with these eyes that hold memory forever.

I cast those same eyes back up to the sea and notice something I had not noticed before.A rock, moving, with my exact proportions—

“Brother!” I cry out, my joy at companionship overriding my grief, or no, not overriding it, merely existing alongside it, I hold both so bright as to burn, and yet I do _not_ burn, I endure. _Endure_!I am far too young to think that, I try to tell myself, as I run toward him, softening my footsteps only a little.

“Now look who isn’t dreaming,” Elros says quietly, without bothering to turn his head to me; he doesn’t need to, I know the smirk on his face just from his words alone.

“I could say the same of you,” I say, sitting down beside him in one motion that I have every reason to believe is graceful.

“And yet you sounded so pleased by it.”

“Well,” I say with an exhale.“Yes.”Sadness carries into my voice; I know this.“And also, seeing you here, I suspect I know what you are thinking.”

“It _is_ rather obvious,” Elros says.

“Mm,” I say, nodding.I close my eyes and imagine that all the rivers now drowned by the sea whisper in my ears.“It hurts, does it not?”

“It does,” Elros says.

Almost without thinking I stretch my arm to my side and open my hand; and before I know it, he’s grabbed on, and oh—oh—oh _no_ , he is sobbing.

“Brother,” I say.

“Home,” he chokes out.“Now gone.”

“I know.”

“It is so hard to stop thinking about,” he says, and his hand tightens around mine.“So hard!How am I to bear this loss, brother? _How_?”

I have a thousand answers, but I know without saying them that they are Elf-answers, and their very inapplicability to him is why we are different now, is what separates us in our souls.He is mortal, but it is not because of that that he cannot bear loss so easily.No.It is the exact reverse.It is because he cannot bear it that he chose mortality.He has not said this to me, but then, he has not needed to.

But too much time has passed without an answer.“Oh, Elros, brother,” I say.“You know I cannot give you that answer.Not in such a way that it could become _your_ answer, as well as mine.”

“I could hear you say it,” he says, distantly.“All the same.”

“I cannot guarantee that would not hurt more,” I say.

And he disconnects his hand from mine, and he says, “You are right.Do not tell me now, then.I do not know that I could bear it.But nor would I have you keep it from me forever, not when I suspect you have so much more to say.”

His acceptance of this hurts, and the pain is sharp—and of course, I will never forget it.Which is exactly what he cannot bear.For him, the stars are not enough, the air is not enough, the leafs in the trees are not enough to offset all these moments that hurt.He never could have been like I am now, he never—

“Brother?”

It is only by his asking of this question that I realize I am sobbing, my head leaning towards him.I raise my eyes to him, somehow, but oh, he cannot see my face, or likely he cannot, it is too dark for his eyes—“Yes?”

He shakes his head slightly.And without him quite saying it in words, I catch in him: _what a strange response to a question that was not a question.You do not need to ask ‘yes’ to a word spoken only in concern._

The speech of thoughts: yes, it seems we still may share it.That is good to know; I had worried somewhat that we would not.

“Do you remember,” I find myself saying, “that Maglor said I smiled too much for a child of war?”

Elros smiles at this.“I know what you’re going to say next,” he says.

“He said you carried the sorrow for us both, but not needlessly; that your carrying of it was why you spent so much time drawing up plans for a better world.”

“He was right, you know,” Elros says.

“Of course I know,” I say, and my words feel somehow the same as the tears that fall down my face.

“And I know that you do.”

I squeeze Elros’ hand then let it go so that I may hug him; it seems that I now do this often, now that I understand I have a finite number of chances.“You will do so well, brother,” I say.“When you lead your people as you intend to, when you make something of a part of the world set aside for you.You will do so well.”

“And you, brother,” he says, and the pressure of his arms feels so light that I can almost imagine that I can feel the way his feels his own mortality, as freeing, which of course I do not understand through my own self, but maybe I can understand through him, “you, your smiles will carry light and warmth that would have otherwise died with an age to those who need it most.I daresay you may do better than I.”

“This was never going to turn out any other way, was it?” I ask.

“No, I suspect not.”

And because his thoughts are like mine echoed back, I breathe deep: for we are connected, entangled, and yet now also the opposite thereof.

“But you, brother,” Elros says as he releases his hold on me, and smiles, looking at me as if he can see me in the darkness although I know he cannot, although he knows I can see him, “you now, I suspect, need rest.”

“How can you tell?” I say with half of a laugh.

“Because all this talk we have just had, you’ve been repeating things you have said before, and though I may be Edain, it is not as if I did not grow up all my life around Elves.”

Accidentally, I grin.“The way they—the way we—would slip into conversation about memory, again and again, when we neared a need for dreams.”

“Yes.”

“Maedhros was the worst, when it came to that, you know.”

“I know,” Elros says.“And you’re doing it again, you do realize?”

I laugh; I hadn’t, quite, but it’s true.“In that case I might fall asleep right here!For certain definitions of sleep.”

“As if you could stop yourself from conversing with me long enough to.”

I laugh again: he does have a point.“Then perhaps it is you who should seek a bed, and leave me to act reasonably and actually find rest of my own.”

“Perhaps,” Elros says, but he does not move to stand.

“The mourning prevents you from it?” I guess.

“You know me too well.”

“It never could have been any other way,” I say.

“You’re doing it again.”

“And you know _me_ too—“

“Elrond!” He says, almost laughing.“I stand by my statement that you need sleep!Now, perhaps!”

He may be right; I can feel rivers and stars and leaves near me, underneath my perceptions, all my memories bright and vying to hold me, to rest me, to bring me peace—

—even the hazier ones, like the collected sense of the color of the sky over all the time of a summer, me and Elros playing among dry grasses, the sound of Maglor’s lyre in the distance as we poked and teased at each other—

—“Oh, good,” Elros says, and I realize that I am dreaming, and I feel the emotion of the house we lived in with our mother and I temper it with the more recent and less sad memory of running through a meadow, and it is all I can do to smile at Elros in a sleeping response.

“Sweet dreams,” he says.

_Always_ , I respond in the speech of thought.


	3. Chapter 3

It is night, it is deep night, and I remember the sunrise, I remember the sunset, I remember it all!Every light of every star and every position of the sun and my father, my father now long set from the sky but still traversing across it each evening and morning, the very last Silmaril on the helm of his ship—all of it!

The wind blows in my hair now, as I run down a hill near the sea.I know, I know that I should sleep, and I love to wrap my memories around me—but there is so much to experience!There is so much to feel and see, here and now, with my eyes and heart changed, although not changed at all—in my core, I must have always wanted this, there is no other way I could have chosen it, but now it _is_ , and I want it all, even though I will never run out of this life.

Never, never—I will never!

So I am grinning, and doing more besides as I run back up the hill to run down it again, and again—I am practicing.It is said Elves are more graceful than Men.I am trying to learn if this is true.Do my legs now hold more skill and balance than they once did?It seems that maybe, maybe it is so; but I will have to try running down the hill a few more times to be sure.

And so I do, I do, the wind rushing in my hair and the stars rushing in my eyes, so bright, so bright; were they this bright before?No, I know with near-certain clarity, they were not—for my eyes now find light in the dark so much easier.This Kindred is of the stars, I have always been told, and now I am too, I am too—

—I am of the stars, and I did not expect to find myself met with obstruction.The front of my body has hit something, something moving, and—

“Having fun there, Elrond?”

I almost blush in embarrassment.That voice that I hear is the voice of Gil-galad, who, well, I would _not_ be surprised if judged me for this.

And yet, is not holding onto joy much the same thing as standing by it, even in the face of one you halfway want to fear?

“Yes,” I defiantly say to him, stepping back and looking up with strength.

He smiles at me and inclines his head to the side; this surprises me.“That is good,” he says, “for indeed I had hoped that you would enjoy your choice.”

I _want_ to pout and look to the side, the way both I and my brother so often do when confronted; but I am not a child, not anymore.So instead I stare right into his face, making certain there is strength in my expression and my posture.“Of course I am enjoying it,” I said.

All he does is laugh again, and I have to wonder if I look like some kind of repentant-yet-strong elfling, adorable and yet also worthy of pride.Perhaps that is what I am, now.

“Why are you up, I wonder?” I decide to ask, smiling back at him.

“You know full well I could ask the same of you,” he says with a smile.Something in his shoulder and arm twitches, and I realize that he is almost reaching to put an arm behind my back, before seemingly thinking better of it.“Would you like to walk together?” He asks.

I acquiesce to this request, deciding that it is probably worth getting to know this [elf-lord].“I am just getting used to things,” I say as we start strolling among the young [aspens] which have sprung up quickly after all the destruction this landscape has so recently endured.

“Things,” he echoes.

“I think you know what I mean,” I say.

“I do,” he says.“But I might like to hear it from you?I’d rather you not fear me, Peredhil; I would like to know who you are, beyond just a list of your accomplishments in the war.”

“My brother accomplished more than I,” I say with a shrug, although of course no bitterness—I was glad, _glad_ , and so lucky, to see all the ways in which he pulled through.

“Still,” he says as I close my eyes to better take in the sound of crunching leaves under my feet.

“And I am not afraid of you,” I say, a little late.“I just don’t know how to act when you come near.I don’t know whether you seek something of me, or whether you rightly even should—something of my growth, maybe?”

He laughs yet again.“Ah, the true measure of growing up.I seem like I should be an authority or mentor figure, to you, but you no longer need one—well, perhaps, in my mind a mentor can always be of use, but still, but still!You do not know whether to see me as an equal or something else, nor do you know what I see of you.”

“I’m afraid you have the right of it,” I say.

“Well, let it be known, then, that although I do rather clearly see you as younger than myself, you are not a child in my eyes—I _would_ offer advice, yes, if you wanted it, but I also would simply offer companionship.I can’t help but be curious about you and your brother, for you have had an opportunity only six others ever had before.”

“Six others who I’m _related_ to,” I comment.

“Exactly,” he says.“And you were more in the middle of it than any of them ever were, hm?You were never one Kindred or the other, and so your choice says nothing of your past ancestry, and everything of _you_.”

“And what of you?” I ask.“Would you have chosen the same, to be as you are now?”

He smiled, and I suspected what he was about to say before he said it.“I do not know, and that is rather selfishly why I wish to get to know _you_.Maybe then I will better be able to imagine what I would have done in your place, and what kind of person I truly am.”

“That is not a bad,” I respond. I close my eyes and nearly without thinking remember the patterns of starlight I’ve just seen. “Or so I would say.”

“One day I hope you will learn to have the confidence to treat all others as your peers!” Gil-galad says, a smile in his voice.  I open my eyes to see that he has nearly the exact same smile as I had imagined, except with more creasing around the eyes—I’ve gotten too used to predicting my brother’s expressions, which I of course know as well as my own heart.

I smile in return; he _is_ right, and it would be good to find a way to be his friend. “It’s almost as if I’ve gotten younger, since,” I comment. “This age is nothing, compared to so many of my kind now—and yet my brother is well of the age to be a venerated leader of his!”

Gil-galad laughs, gently.  “Your situation is like none Arda has before seen.”

I smile and incline my head. “Indeed.”

Silence passes between us as we walk forward, slow and aimless and under the stars. My eyes trace the shadows and the way they mix with fallen leaves; and I know with a softer, easier smile that I will remember the look of it forever. My smile widens, my eyes closing; forever! I will be and I will remember, forever!

It rises in me and I want to laugh with it, with the remembered sounds of tiny streams running to the sea.  And in fact I find that I do laugh, but only gently, as soft as a whisper.

“Not something I said, I take it,” Gil-galad says.

“My apologies,” I say, “but no.”

“No apology is necessary,” he says and pauses, glancing to the sky.  “I wonder, is there anything I could do to make you more comfortable around me? I do _not_ seek to be intimidating.”

The trees pass around us as we walk by, and we turn between them at an angle I haven’t done so before. And of course that reveals what I maybe should have expected: the sight of the sea.

I sigh. “Beleriand,” I say under my breath, as if I could _not_ say it.

“I know,” Gil-galad says gently; we have stopped walking, we are standing here between the trees.  He turns to me and smiles, though there is sadness clear in his eyes. “We are inheritants of a lost people, of a drowned country, of a broken past.  How are we then to move forward? How are we to provide anything - be it direction or comfort or love - to a people who have so long been crying? Do you hear them, Elrond? Do you hear them cry and scream?”

I hold onto all feelings too tight — have chosen to, have promised to — to flinch at his words. They are pain, they feel like pain, but they are bright and as deep as every love I’ve yet felt. It hurts like needles but I hold it close, I hold it close. “Yes,” I respond. “I do hear them.” 

“Good,” he says.

“For me,” I correct. “Not all would chose as I have done, to hold it forever.”

“And yet your brother hears them too, does he not?”

I smile fondly, remembering his own smiles, his own tears, the compassion in his face. “Yes,” I say, “he does.”

“And so it would seem to be that there is a good in hearing it—in knowing, I’m not flinching away, so that you may be aware of the people you can help.”

“And yet for some that hearing and knows could not last for always—they would one day need rest.”

He smiles still, looking to me as I look out to the sea, its waves crashing against the sand nonchalantly, as if nothing beautiful lies lost under them. “You understand your brother’s Kindred better than I.”

“They are my Kindred too,” I say, looking to him with the smile of knowing it is true. “I am both, no matter what I’ve chosen.”

“And would you, then, one day demand rest from it all?”

“No,” I say, “never.”  But the word is slightly cold to my lips, as if not wholly true.  “Or, even if I did, it would not be rest for ever. A break, nothing more.”

“I think you will do great things for us,” he comments.

“I feel that I’ve heard that before,” I say, letting a bit of wryness into my voice.  “But if by ‘us’ you mean only Elves, I may have some quibbles with the full implication of your words.”

“Because you are of Men too?”

“Yes,” I say.  “Though I would also hope it is in me to care for more than just those.”

“More than ‘just’ the two Kindreds?” Gil-galad asks, a laugh in his voice. “You are ambitious.”

“Oh, no,” I say. “My brother has always been the ambitious one.”

A single glance to Gil-galad tells me I have not convinced him, but I don’t mind. I smile.

“You look more comfortable already,” he says.

“Perhaps.”

“Well, for all that I may have pushed you into it, I do know that it does take time,” he says. “Though I stand by your being unique upon Arda, we do have similarities.  I wasn’t so much older than you when I was placed into kingship.”

“So I’ve heard,” I say.

“So do not fear me!” He admonishes me, the ocean roaring somewhere behind his voice. They go together, strangely, and I can’t quite figure out why, but I don’t have to, because I will remember it forever, so I can think on it and work it out later. “Even if it takes you a while,” he continues.

“A while to get to that point,” I echo. “And a while to think on things I hear and experience, a long while to consider, because I will not forget, not any of them...”

“Ah,” Gil-galad says with another smile. “There are so many things I hardly ever think of as unique, as I have lived all my life with them.”

“And I now discover all of them anew,” I say.  “It’s a lovely experience, I find.”

“And I believe it!” He says.  “But you say that you are Man too, that you still find yourself so?”

“Yes,” I say, though I do not need to, for I have already said it, and he remembers my words as clearly as I remember his.

“Yet you have chosen what I was born to, for love of it, so I would near say you are more Elf than I.”

“Maybe so!” I say with a laugh.  “But that doesn’t give falsehood to all else I’ve said.”

“Of course it doesn’t,” he says, and I realize in the continuation of my smile that he really has succeeded in making me more comfortable.  And he—oh, it occurs to me now—he understands, not the choice itself, but the love in making it, and what I experience now.

“So would you like to hear more?” I ask, and his eyes crinkle with unrestrained joy.

“Yes,” he says, although this also need not be said aloud.

“Well, my balance seems a little better,” I start.

“I noticed you practicing.”

“Of course you did,” I say. “I ran into you.”

“I have not forgotten!”

“Exactly,” I say with a smile.  “You have not, and now neither do I. It all stays in me now, without effort, like it is meant to be mine, always.”

“And it is!” Gil-galad says. “You have proven that, by the choice you made.”

I smile and the waves break, and I still cannot look at this sea without thinking of Beleriand so yes, yes there is still sadness in me, but the stars are bright, and here I am remembering them, and remembering the feel of sand under my feet, and remembering how Elros looked when that leaf fell into his hair, us laughing and smiling...

And I will remember it always.

The thought is sweet, as it has been each time I’ve thought it, though of course it is not without pain, for I will also remember pain.

“You lose yourself in thought quite like us too,” Gil-galad notes.

“And again I must say that my brother does so just as much.”

Gil-galad smiles at me again; the wind is in his hair. “You love him a lot, do you not?”

“Yes,” I respond simply and without hesitation. “Yes I do.”

He looks to me again, and I fully look back, making eye contact; there is sorrow in his eyes, and I know it, for it has these past days lived in mine as well.  And yet, it is worth bearing.

And so I hold it tight, and somehow even pain to come seems soft and gentle, because with it is also smiles. And I look to Gil-galad, a [century] my elder, and know that he knows feelings much the same.


	4. Chapter 4

There’s lightning far off, on the sea; the sun’s recently set, but the stars are out, shining, shining!I still love them, I will never not, not ever.I tilt my head back to smile at them, and the smile becomes a grin, and the grin becomes a laugh.

“You’re doing it again,” Elros notes.

“Aren’t I always?” I say.

“That’s what I was complaining about.”

That comment of course does nothing else but make me grin, and grin more.It’s something he’s said before, something so very his, and I have to admit—it fits the gentle curve of his ears.

And there’s the sound of metal against wood, and only a quick glance down shows that wood shavings are collecting on the dirt near the fire.He’s whittling something, again.And of course I know that this means he does not want to talk, he does that sometimes, and I remember how Maglor did too, but with various musical instruments, and that left me and Maedhros to speak through the evening, as he wanted nothing more than to be distracted by the darker of his thoughts—

—bodies, bodies, I remember how we were hidden from them on that day—

—“Do you remember?” I ask Elros, as I always eventually do, I never stay silent for long.

“Remember what?” Elros says with a laugh that goes along with a rolling of his eyes.“Because the answer is, probably not as well as you—“

“—well, of course!—“

“—but yes, I _probably_ do.”He whittles several more strikes, and when I actually don’t say anything for a few moments, he says, “so, what is it?”

“The thing I was asking you to remember?”

“Obviously,” he says, and he doesn’t even _need_ to roll his eyes for me to know that he wants to.“And I’m only asking you because if I don’t, you’ll just say it with ten times the syllables a minute from now.”

I laugh; he knows me well, too well.And despite that I laugh I know—of course I know, for I do not forget, not now, not anything—that what I wanted to say is not joyful at all, it is so near a great sorrow as to inevitably be colored by it, but I was thinking if it, I was thinking of it, and it deserves to be voiced—

“Do you remember that look in Maedhros’ eyes, the one he sometimes got before suggesting that he play a game, or read a story?”

_The one he waited until we were older to tell us a thing about the reasons behind_?

“Of course I do,” Elros says.“I mean, I’m sure _you_ remember it well enough to categorize each line on his face…”

“You know my memory only changed in the moment I made my choice!”

“Well, still,” Elros says, waving a single hand lazily as if to shoo away my words.“But yes, I do.”He whittles more gauges into the piece of wood he’s working on, taking away from it in order to make it better, making it smaller in order to make it what he wants to be, using absence to build it.He closes his eyes, and shakes his head.“I can get to the point for you, you know.You’re saying this because you miss him, right?”

I sigh out, breath passing through my teeth, _missing him_ , yes, but more too, afraid, afraid, for is he even in the Halls?Or is he in the darkness, the void that he tried so long and so desperately to avoid?Or is he somewhere in the earth, even now covered in flame—

“Of course I do,” I say through tears.And my next sentence would be that _he does not deserve what has happened to him_ , but that is of course a lie, and yet not a lie, because I cannot help but believe that _no one_ deserves it, if his fate is anything but the Halls.

And even then, I am not sure anyone does deserve it.

“And I miss him too,” Elros says, and I can tell it is not a lie even though he indeed can lie better than me.“In most ways that mattered he was your father, after all, and Maglor mine.”

“Both of them were _both_ of ours,” I complain, though I know the differences in closeness he speaks of.

But he doesn’t even have a chance to respond before all my heart pangs in the memory of a fireside too sharp not to speak, in the days ten years ago when he finally told all his story in full.“Do you remember how he wished to be what you are now?” I ask.

“He wanted to hide, Elrond.He wanted to escape his pain, even though it was his own creation.”

“And yet I ask you, if you had the power to give him that—would you have denied it him?Would you have denied him the escape of the Gift you have now willfully chosen?”

Elros just lets out a breath and shakes his head, near imperceptibly.“Why are you bringing this up now?”

“Because my mind wanders,” I say, “and if I do not get this off my mind now, it will wander into nightmares in a few hours.”

“That, brother, is the disadvantage of your kindred’s dreams.”

“You get nightmares too!” I protest.

“But for us, at least,” he says, “there is the comfort of them not being real.”

I rub my arms, just a little, as if smoothing down hair that is standing up—it is not doing so, of course, and I don’t even shiver, but it seems that maybe I should, at the knowledge that as I experience more, I will see more and more horror to chase me all through the night, things worse than the haunting of Maedhros’ eyes, worse even than those of his dead that I saw directly when he still intended to kill us.

“Do you wonder where Maglor is, now?” I ask.

“Of course I do, brother,” Elros says, and there is exasperation in his voice.“One day, maybe you will stop asking me questions you already know the answer to.”

“You know I won’t.”

He laughs and rolls his eyes.“My eyes are getting quite tired from putting up with you tonight, I will have you know.They really are not meant to roll so much as this.”

“How would you rather I talk about this with you, then—“

“I might rather you _not_ , as I am attempting to carve something here, and we have already _had_ this conversation.”

“But—“

Elros shoots me a look, the one that means he’s not just playing around, but would actually prefer me to leave for now.Of course I do not want to—I never do—and for that reason I feel my ears droop without my intent for them to do so, but I nod, as I do not wish to burden my brother overmuch, even though I also wish to talk to him at every oppurtunity, while he is still alive.

“But, Elrond, you don’t have to remember alone,” Elros says softly.“I may feel more rested in a bit or certainly tomorrow, but also, did you not say that you found yourself getting along well with Gil-galad, what was it, two nights ago?”

“Three.”

Elros smiles.“You would know.Go, find him.I’m sure he would love to talk to you more.”

I know it to be true, so I nod, but I am also sure to look at Elros’ face and at his smile, so that I will remember it and the way the fire flickers across it.There is sadness in his eyes, and yes, in the way his leg doesn’t bounce in even the slightest I see his tiredness.

“Good night, brother,” I say, softly.

 

“Hello,” I say, and Gil-galad turns to me from exactly where I’d expected to find him—the edge of the beach, looking out at the waves.

“Hello yourself,” he says back.

There is too much I could say.There is his glance and what it holds, and what the ocean behind him holds too; and there is all that is in me.

I hold it all and it is like waves, it could drown me, make me unable to speak—but no, no, I can bear the weight of memory. I again recall that leaf twisting into Elros’ hair, and somehow the brightness of the laugh I laughed then helps.

And so I just say, “I want to talk.”

“So serious a turn a phrase,” Gil-galad says with a slight smile, and then waves me over to sit by his side.

“This is where we talked before,” I note.

“I can’t stop looking,” he says. “I knew that land. I lived in that land.”

“I did too,” I say.

He forces his head to the side, to look at me, and indeed in the slowness of the motion it does seem like a force to take himself from his own memories. “But you wanted to talk about something?”

“Yes,” I say. “Sorrows of my own weigh on me like nightmares, but if you are not—“

“I am able to hear them,” he says. “Maybe especially if you walk with me away from the sea?”

“Do you really want to leave it?” I ask. The sand has a deep imprint where his hand has been resting in it.

He closes his eyes. “No,” he admits.  “But perhaps I should—“

“No, not yet,” I say.  “That would be turning your back on the sorrow, would it not? And that would not befit all that you hope to honor with that very sorrow.”

Something dawns in his face and it looks almost like a horror, but then he smiles.  “You considered this when you chose, didn’t you?”

“Yes.”

“You chose to not turn your back on all the sorrow, and you chose that /after/ Beleriand fell to wrath and the sea—?”

“Yes.”

“You _chose_ this,” he repeats.

“Yes,” I say.  And Maglor would have understood it even less than he, and Maedhros less than that. “Yes, yes, I chose to hold it all, even to the breaking of the world, and beyond.”

I feel the wideness in Gil-galad’s eyes sear itself into my memory as if it will be remembered more than anything else, as if it could be, now, when I will never forget.

“Yes,” I say again softer, “and the joy even tighter.”

Gil-galad looks at me for a long, long moment, his hands tighten into the sand, and just when I think he has been silent so long that I will end up talking, he says: “In you, then, is a ferocity beyond anything I have ever seen.”

“Maybe so,” I say with a smile, tilting my head back a little to acknowledge it.  “But I was only able to make this choice because I had trust that I could find help in beating the pain, when it threatened to be too much, and Elros is tired tonight, and I’m remembering the men who raised me, and—“ _And I’m rambling again, I’m talking too much_ —

“The men who raised you,” Gil-galad says, and then his eyes flash open even wider.  “Oh.”

“Yes. They are lost now, I think.”

“I think so too.”

“I expected you almost to talk me down, to say that Maglor is alive,” I say.

“Alive, maybe,” he says. “But lost, in the way that you mean.”

“Too shattered to come back to us, it seems,” I say.

Gil-galad nods, and I force myself to not restrain a sob.

“I want to remember them,” I say. “Not in the sense that I am concerned about forgetting!”

“Of course not, you are an elf, are you not?”

“Yes,” I say with what almost feels like a laugh.  “I have become used to speaking with those who are not. Those who would find the other interpretation possible. But what I mean, as I think you know, is that I ache to spend long hours speaking of them, their glances and laughs and moments spent by the fireside, their details—to speak of it all.”

“It is not uncommon for elves to meet together in the deep of night soon after a mortal dies—for many nights after, often—and do just that,” Gil-galad says with a gentle smile.

“But these were not mortal.”

“No, and so it is not forever—“

“But it might be!” I shout, and my outburst surprises me even as it doesn’t.  “When finally we were old enough for Maedhros to speak of his fear in the light of a fire, when he couldn’t look at us but only at the wall, when he spoke the words—_everlasting darkness,_ he said, the punishment for breaking his Oath, the Oath he followed to the end of the world—the Oath that killed those I _knew_ in my youngest childhood—and yet he found a way to be gentle with me—“

Gil-galad hands me a kerchief; I hadn’t even noticed there were tears steaming down my face. I grab it and hold it but I can’t bring myself to move my hands to my face.

“He was a good father,” I say.  “I don’t know how he came to it, but he was, and Maglor too, but I saw the look in their eyes even when they thought I didn’t, when what was in them, the doom they made, twisted against them and burned them. And now they are gone, gone, and all I can do is _hope_ they are in the Halls, but I do not know if they are.”

I finally wipe at my eyes and my wet face with shaking hands; I sob. An entire land has sunk and many people have died, and yet tonight it is _this_ which is nearly too much to bear.

“Would you like me to hold you?” Gil-galad asks. “This sorrow is not mine, but I know similar. I can hear you as you cry, and I would be here with you, I would provide comfort through the sorrow so that you may sooner reach no and hold it tight.”

In his words I realize: I _am_ one of his people, now. The duty he had spoken of to me before is also to me. The protection he would wish to give is also for me.

“I would accept it,” I say.

And his arms are strong around me, this High King of the Noldor, of Maedhros and Maglor’s people, and through a distant and small part of my bloodline, part of my own people too.

“My memories from before I chose are not quite as clear,” I say, once the sobbing has stopped.

“And you have not seen them since,” Gil-Galad says, catching at least one f my implications.

“Yes. If I focus, the softer memories of my youth can come into brightness and clarity—but it is not quite so easy as the new ones, which live in me without even thinking about it.”

“Soft like clouds and mist?” He asks; he does not know himself, of course, what it s like for all memory to _not_ live in him clear as the world that surrounds.

“Something like,” I say.

Gil-galad releases his arms from me, but still sits close now that he is no longer holding me.  “What were they like? I did not know them, not truly.”

“Maglor liked to read us stories before sleep, and sing to us too. He quickly learned that adventure stories were our favorites, and told us those often, delighting at first in the way the same story could be new to us a year or two later.It was less delightful for him when he realized that Elros could get _bored_ of hearing again and again things he once liked!Perhaps we should have known, then, what each of our choices would be.”

I shake myself out of that particular thought, since it isn’t what I wanted to tell him, it isn’t a detail of the men who raised me—but then, the sorrow that creeps into my eyes when I think of it reminds me that it perhaps isn’t irrelevant either.

And yet, I have already wandered to another thought, another memory.

“Maedros loved salted meat with only a tiny bit of pepper, but Maglor seasoned all his cooking with herbs, with anything he could gather.One time though he forgot that a few plants that are only bitter to elves are poisonous to humans, and me and Elros spent a whole week sick as he worried over us and put cold towels to our heads, whispering apologies and singing lullabies.Maedros would bring it up again and again once the danger was over and we were well; _Maglor, you cannot claim to be responsible, not after that incident with the herbs_.They would laugh over it, even if sometimes one would end up slapping the other with a few reams of paper.

“They were close brothers; of course they were.They followed each other to the ends of—until—“ my voice sputters out in a burst of pain that isn’t quite a sob.Because they followed each other so long, but not now: being together with each other, being together with _anyone_ , was not worth more than their cursed Oath, in the end.Just as Maglor had always feared, he told us once on a night under the stars, while I marveled at Eärendil’s light in the sky again, while Elros in pain and sorrow clutched at the hem of his shirt.

“But now they no longer follow each other,” I find myself sputtering out.“Now they are sundered and lost, and I cannot say if they wander the Halls or have fallen to a worse fate, I cannot say!”

“I know,” Gil-galad says, and of course, of course I have been repeating myself, like in a nightmare.That is where it seems I will fall despite my best efforts, if I dare stop talking the night around me will start mixing with the pain of the memory of their smiles, and worse things besides, for pain calls to pain and I will find myself remembering the screams of war, with nothing to temper them, no memories of bright sun through trees or gentle rains.

“And I have told you,” I say, “and I have asked you to help me bear it, and I know not what else I could ask, for I still feel so weak to the pain and the mourning.”

“You could speak more of it, through all the long night,” Gil-galad suggests.“Or, and I do not know if you would wish this, you could let yourself sleep here, by my side, with me to bear you, and feel me touch you in comfort if you cry to feel the memories.”

“Which I would,” I say.“I know there would be such tears, and such pain.And of course I did choose this.But tell me: is this how you would comfort an Elf-child if they were recovering from something?Would you have them fall asleep, into all their memories, and hold them through it?”

“Yes,” Gil-galad says.“And there have been times where my own mother did so, and far more times when friends who followed me through war or pain did the same for me and I for them.Sometimes talking is enough, yes, but sometimes the nightmare still comes, and you are right to intuit that it is so much easier if someone else can let you bear it.Or, in absence of that, I would perhaps find a river or waterfall to watch as I slept, to ground me in something beautiful and bright.”

“If you cannot call the gentle memories yourself, to temper the worse ones in dream…”

“Exactly,” he says.“You really are quite good at this, for one who has only navigated it for a [week] now.”

“We dreamed Elf-dreams before,” I say, “sometimes.Most often if we were to nap during the day, it would be like this—but if we hurt enough that an Elf would fall into nightmare, usually the deep sleep of Man would rise up to take and comfort us.And no longer, not for me, I expect, not unless I tried very hard at it.And I do not wish to.”

Gil-galad smiles.“Do you wish for a bed, Elrond, newly-chosen Elf?”

I almost laugh at the title he has given me, despite knowing the sorrow that waits beyond my eyes.“No,” I say, “I think I would rather the stars.”

“Then rest your head on me,” he says, “and watch them.I think it will be a very good sunrise.”


	5. Chapter 5

The first rains of the season are falling, the very first, the first since I have chosen, and I am smiling to find myself memorize their rhythms on the leaves above.I sit with Elros, and look to him, and that itself is a comfort I know I will carry with me through the long years—him, my mirror image, so different from me and yet so familiar.

And the rain makes such a gentle melody as we take shelter under one of the larger trees.

“Well, this came about suddenly,” he comments.

“Indeed it did!” I say, smiling to watch the white of it around us, the way it grays and blurs the world and yet makes the green seem greener.

“Will your mirth ever cease,” Elros mutters, although I know it is not in disdain, not at all.

“No, never,” I say, a light of playfulness flashing in my eyes and my voice.“That is what I promised.That is what I chose.”

“Although did you not say that two days ago you spent the whole of the night crying?”

“Well, there _is_ that,” I say, and smile at him, and I know what he sees in my smile: me, his brother, his twin, insufferable always and forever, to the ends of the earth.

“I _would_ say that I do not understand you,” Elros says, “if you haven’t regularly spent hours and hours explaining every last part of your thought processes to me—“

I laugh.“And rightly so!For does it not do you well to understand your own brother?”

“It also does well to have _some_ moments of silence and peace,” Elros mutters.

“You have some!” I say.“Occasionally.”

“Not anytime I’m within earshot of _you_.”

I grin, not having any way to deny this.“But you love me all the same.”

He rolls his eyes.“You seem to seek to hasten my departure, to lead my people, to _maybe_ have _some_ freedom from your constant chatter—“

“Don’t worry, I’ll visit!” I say, still grinning.

“I am to lead a kingdom,” Elros says, almost a mutter in the gentle and misty air.“And _what_ , exactly, are your plans? _Other_ than visiting me and my descendants, and bothering them for all time?”

I smile, and let that smile be gentle.“I have been thinking of it.”

“ _Have_ you now, for last I heard, thinking requires _not_ talking—“

“I have!” I say.“And it seems to me that so much is lost, or might be, and I do not wish that for it, I do not wish it—“ I almost choke in a sob, the emotion coming fast, as it does in Elves but also always has in me, even before my choice.“I wish to remember, brother.You know that.”

“And…?”

“And so I find myself daydreaming of long travels to collect the knowledge of our peoples, to hear all they remember of Beleriand and also all they know of the crafts they have learned, and cooking, and language—all of it.And in me it will be kept, safe—and when I write it, it will be safer, safe even from the possibility of my death.And for that reason I wish to know all that _both_ our peoples know, in case, in case—“

“You are so greedy!” Elros says.“For time, for knowledge, for _everything_! It is never enough for you, is it?”

“What, _life_?” I ask.“Because, no, Elros, life is never enough for me and never will be, not in the sense that I will tire of it!I will never have had my fill, I will drink from its cup and drink and drink, though centuries may pass, and millenia, and pain and sorrow and war, and still I will not turn back from it!I will not escape it!I will not ever have _enough_!”

In a moment as I talked, Elros almost shrunk back from my voice, but now he smiles, a strange peace in his face.“Then do that, brother.Do that, do it all, and tell me how it goes, after the breaking of the world—“

“But I thought you wanted me to give you peace from my words?” I ask.“For then, so far from now, when our different paths finally reconnect after long years—then, Elros, I will have so much to tell you, and I doubt all the powers in the world will be able to stop my tongue.”

“I know,” Elros says.“And perhaps that is why I ask for some moments of peace now.And why I am glad you may spend some years—maybe even more!—wandering distant mountains and fields in search of knowledge, giving me some years of peace without your visits.”

“Though you might miss me,” I comment.

He rolls his eyes.“I will hold celebrations each time you leave.”

“You’ll still miss me,” I say.“You’ll suddenly find yourself restless at night, and wonder why, until you realize that you can’t find anyone better than me to be irritated at, it will feel so strange—“

He slaps me, gently, on my head.“Wishful thinking, brother.”

I just smile at him.“Oh, you love me, and you know it.”

There’s footsteps, and even though the sound is though mud rather than hard dirt ground, I recognize them immediately, for of course I memorize so quickly now.

“I was wondering why you two had not come back with the rest of the hunting party,” Gil-galad says.

“Well, it is raining, you see,” Elros says.

“So was it when the rest returned,” Gil-galad says.

“Ah, but there was also the problem that we were already further behind, because Elrond could not _help_ himself but to show me a strange beetle he found—“

“—It was blue and orange, and shining like the sun!” I protest.

Elros shakes his head.“Anyway, my brother here _delayed_ me, and so it started pouring while we were still somewhat far, and we sought shelter.”

Gil-galad smiles.“Well,” he says, “now that I know where you are, would you mind if I relax here with you?I find that I might enjoy the company.”

I nod, but am sure to glance to Elros, in case he disagrees—and he says, “yes,” and I hear no lie in his voice nor see any on his face.

And so Gil-galad sits across from us, water dripping off his dark hair.He sits on a bed of grass and pine needles, less under the crown of deepest shelter that Elros and I have found, but still far dryer than he would have been out in the open.

“So I hear you’ve been getting to know my terrible brother,” Elros says, and had I been drinking something, I am fairly sure I would have spat it out.

“That appears to be the case,” Gil-galad says with a smile, surprising me: he has never himself said something so irreverent about anyone, so I did not expect him to respond to such a statement with case.

“Tell me,” Elros says, “ _have_ you gotten him to shut up yet?And if so, please do inform me as to how.I’m listening.”

If I had not lived with Elros all my life, I might find myself embarrassed at this.

“No, not particularly,” Gil-galad says with a smile.“Nor would I want to.In fact, at first I had some difficulty _getting_ him to freely say things to me.”

“So you have discovered it then!” Elros says.“The secret for him to be quiet.”

“Intimidation,” Gil-galad says simply.“But nevertheless, how are you faring?Both of you, whoever is interested in answering?”

“I find myself planning,” Elros says.“Preparing.I have much ahead of me.”

_And he worries whether he will be able to manage it, or how_.He does not say this, but I hear it in his voice—it’s not a waver, it’s an added hardness.As if to cover the fear up.I know him too well not to hear it.

But he has not _said_ it, so I know he does not want Gil-galad to know, and so of course I will respect that—by turning the subject away from him, by talking incessantly about myself, just as he always complains about.

“Well,” I say, “I find myself listening to the rain, memorizing it, although of course I always memorize everything now, it is sinking into me and becoming like the fabric of me, or no, like a fabric around me that I will never lose possession of.It is mine to hold, and I need not fear its loss, no matter what next happens, no matter if the rain stops falling this next second and the sun begins to shine.It will not be lost in me, not really.”

“Not even at the breaking of the world,” Gil-galad says with a smile.“Elrond, some of your words remind me to be truly happy to be alive.”

I smile genuinely, without thinking—but also bow, playfully, with thinking.“In that way, I will be at your service,” I say.

“ _Elrond!_ ” Elros says.“He is the High King of the Noldor!Did you just—“

I think I can feel myself blush, realizing what I said.“I just technically pledged … well, _I meant_ —“ and yet, I cannot finish the sentence, for it seems strangely wrong to take it back now.

Gil-galad smiles, in that calm and kind way that I am already growing used to.“You do not have to mean that as a true pledge.I would not mind, either way.”

And yet, and yet, in these past few days I have grown to like him, and I know the way the words I spoke feel in me.“And yet, I think it _was_ a true pledge.”

When I glance to the side, I find Elros’ face firmly in the palms of his hands.

“Brother, if this must be embarrassment, it is not yours to bear,” I tell him.

“I still had to _listen_ to it,” he complains, and I understand—he bears so much without thinking, and he always has.And I know the way pain weighs on him, I have seen it so often in his eyes.

“And yet it is just embarrassment,” I say to him, gently.“It is nothing worse.”I turn to Gil-galad, and I smile, and I say, “Although I do not think _I_ am embarrassed.”

“Shut up…” Elros moans.

“Never,” I say.


	6. Chapter 6

The wind is blowing strongly, so strongly, and it chills me, and yet that chill does not seem to get worse the longer I stand in it.I expect it to, but it only ever feels cold: I do not quite shiver, even now, after an hour.

Perhaps that is why I have not again moved inside.I am again testing my new limits.

And I am remembering; of course I am remembering.There is so much already that I have experienced, and though it pains me, I always and always come to the conclusion that I want more.And the day I made that decision in full—the day I chose—will forever be ingrained in me.

_I will now remember forever and always._

Elros’ smile, every sky of stars I have walked under since my choice.Gil-galad’s arms around mine as I cry.A leaf falling and catching in Elros’ hair.The sound of rain, the sight of sun, every laugh and every moment of joy.And the older things too, though they blur more easily around their edges: my mother’s smile in gentle morning light, the cries of battle, my hand tight in Elros’, Maglor’s music and Maedhros’ distant smiles, a waterfall we once walked by, the cry of birds in the woods.

_Throughout the world_.

Throughout it, throughout it, I wish to live throughout it! The wind rises around me as I smile with need and want, something like a clenching, a fire, a ferocity.Yes, yes, I accept all this world can bring, all of it, the joy and the pain both, the gladness and the sorrow.I will reject none of it, I will live, I will live, I will forever drink from this cup!

_And so I will remember this.I will._

And this, too, I will remember it, the pattern of wind that falls on my skin and the distant sound of a falling stream.And I will remember my thoughts, these thoughts I think now, the way I weave them with older thoughts, with my promise that will forever remain my first fully bright memory, the first one that shines and stings and burns and sings out like starlight.

_I promise myself now to hold onto the joy._

And I will, I will, I promise it again to myself under my breath.I whisper it: “I will hold onto the joy.”I whisper this in defiance of Elros’ fate, in defiance of the wars that I know are to come, in defiance of shedding blood and screams of pain.Not that I will flinch back from these things either—no, no, I promise that too, that I will not reject them.But always closer to me will be the joy, always, each moment in which I smile in me deep as my blood, no, deeper, deeper, and yet more clear and well-known to me.

_Always and always_.

“Always,” I whisper again to myself, and I like the sound of the word: it is mine now, so easily befitting of the fate I have chosen.Thousands of years will pass, more, more than I can easily envision now, so young among my Kindred in the world: and none of this will fade.Not this moment, and not the last.

_For I will have joy in infinite measure._

And that is what always means, that is what eternity means, that is what all the length of the world promises to me: infinite sorrow, yes, but infinite joy too.The moments will not run out.There will be more sunrises, always, and more softly exchanged words by firelight or under stars, and more laughter, more smiles, more songs.It will not run out.Not ever, not ever, it will always fill me.

_To hold it is the greatest gift I can give myself_.

And I have given it, I have, for this is the first of all care: to care for oneself.To give oneself enough gentleness that there will be strength to spare for others, for all the world.And I know now, so clearly, that the more joy I take in, the more sorrow and pain I will be able to bear, the more wounds I will be able to heal, the more people I will be able to help such that they can fill with more joy, and share that back with me, give me more so that I can too give more, and more.

_This is the fulfillment of the rightness of my choice_.

And I never would have chosen any other way.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So it's... over? Well, sure, the fic of this name is :P. I'm sure I'll write more about this bean later.. maybe not even long from now... but it probably won't be in the exact same year of his life. Anyway this seemed like a super-good wrap-up for now, so here we are.


End file.
